Sounds Around Town: A look back at what some of our favorite musicians had to say in 2017

Thursday

Dec 28, 2017 at 6:01 AM

It's time to look back at the sometimes wise, sometimes insightful, sometimes goofy things that musicians of all sorts said in 50 Sounds Around Town in 2017.

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

It’s that time of year again, time to look back at the sometimes wise, sometimes insightful, sometimes goofy things that musicians of all sorts said – not all of them about music – during the approximately 50 Sounds Around Town interviews conducted in 2017. After extensive winnowing, the list has been narrowed down, alphabetically, to a half-dozen voices.

Martin Barre (guitarist for The Martin Barre Band and Jethro Tull)

On how he got started playing music:

“When I was14 I bought my first guitar. After about two years, when I got into playing, my dad bought me a lot of jazz albums. It was a family tradition. His granddad was a violinist, and my dad wanted to be a clarinetist, but he couldn’t be because he had to go and work in a factory. But as soon as he knew I wanted to play, he really supported me. I didn’t like the jazz guitar, but I loved the flute playing on those records. So, I bought a flute, and I played flute about two years after I started guitar. Then the saxophone sort of came by default about three years down the line. But I couldn’t get a job; people only wanted guitar players. To be honest, I never really liked the saxophone.”

John Doe (singer-guitarist, actor, singer bass player for X)

On the politics of punk music and whether contemporary rock will see a new surge of rebellion:

“I would hope so. Why not?! I’ve never written overtly political songs. I’m a believer in social politics: the way you behave, the way you spend your money ... that’s the best politics. I’m not a fan of what’s going on right now, but I was around when Reagan got elected, and things got bad. I liked the idea of Barack Obama, but I didn’t necessarily like what he did, as far as deporting people and dropping bombs and more drone strikes. Trump is just more overt about it, but not smart. That’s the thing that bums me out the most. Trump doesn’t have the intellect. But I wrote most of the [political song] ‘See How We Are,’ so there’s a way of bringing politics into a song that’s a little more artistic, a little sneakier than just saying, ‘Donald Trump is an idiot.’”

John Lodge (singer and bass player for The Moody Blues)

On discovering rock ’n’ roll when he was growing up in England:

“Rock ’n’ roll didn’t exist in England then. But when I was 11 or 12 years of age, suddenly Bill Haley turned up in the movie ‘Blackboard Jungle’ and then ‘Rock Around the Clock,’ and I was captivated by the absolute energy of rock ’n’ roll. Suddenly people like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and Fats Domino showed up, and I became totally fascinated with the boogie side of rock ’n’ roll, with the left-hand side [the bass part] of the piano. I realized that because whatever the right-hand side was doing on the piano, you could sing that part; it was the melody. But the left-hand side drove it all. By then I was 13 and I’d bought a steel-string guitar. I was trying to learn all these boogie moves on the bottom four strings of the guitar. I finally realized that for me, that was where I was at.”

On the art of songwriting, and whether it’s gotten easier over the years:

“I’d say no. Songs are a mystery. When great songs come down, it’s almost like you feel very fortunate that you connect. You can sit down and do the Tin Pan Alley thing, and crank stuff out, but I’ve found that when the really great stuff hits, it’s almost like you’re a vehicle, and a lot of things kind of come down in a perfect way. And if you’re awake and alert, and let it happen, it can happen.”

Livingston Taylor (singer-guitarist)

On what it takes to be a successful singer-songwriter:

“The person who taught me to play the guitar was my brother James. He’s a wonderful guitar player. It’s so interesting when you hear a James Taylor or Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, or Billy Joel on piano. People don’t understand that you really need to be a good player. What allows Billy Joel to have a career is the quality of his piano playing. It allows him flexibility in his writing, and it’s an underpinning for his voice, which is adequate, but is nothing you could pick out on its own. Nor, for that matter, are the voices of Paul Simon or James Taylor or Bob Dylan. These are voices that excel because they’re underpinned by their musicality and by the quality of the songs they’re writing.”

Peter Wolf (singer with The Midnight Travelers and the J. Geils Band)

On his earliest memories of seeing live musical performances when he was growing up in the Bronx:

“My father was a musician. He came out of vaudeville, and he worked with the Shuberts. He actually played the Shubert theater in Boston in 1930. So, I had a lot of eclectic musical experiences, but there were two really profound ones. The first was seeing Arturo Toscanini conduct, and the other was following my sister, who was a dancer in the Alan Freed Big Beat Show, and getting to see the Alan Freed Cavalcade of Stars. Even now I can’t quite believe it, but when I was 10 years old, I went to one show where I saw Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Buddy Holly & the Crickets, The Everly Brothers, Jo Ann Campbell – the blonde bombshell – The Chantelles, Dicky Doo & the Don’ts, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. And I’m probably leaving out four or five.”